Using Resources

When writing the lesson this week, I found a lot of resources I still wasn’t familiar with that I had wished I knew more about. A few of the ones I didn’t think of that Allie suggested, such as Assault Care Center Extending Shelter and Support (ACCESS), I’ve noticed throughout my comings and goings on campus. I sought out a conversation about ACCESS with a friend to learn more about it. I think the most important thing for us as peer mentors is to be able to shed light on resources, especially ones that students might not hear about regularly. This way they have some sort of guide if they run across problems instead of just feeling lost.

We want to create trust in the group and between ourselves and the students so that they come to us if they have problems and we need to be able to point them in the right direction if the issues are above what we can help them with. Taking time to reflect on different resources on campus before the Fall can make tricky conversations easier because the last thing we’d want to do is inadvertently making them feel like this is not a normal problem or something that you’ve seen before, even if it is.

The book they suggested that as mentors we should role play how to refer students and I think this is a great tip. As it has been mentioned throughout the semester, there will be times in the next semester where you will be caught off guard and having a little bit of practice on how to deal with any information shared with you will be really important to keep level. It will cut down on processing time in the conversation and also be helpful in the some-what routine issues like roommate disagreements or studying problems to have a quick answer ready.